Executive Summary

Corporate Values In A Changing World

Gary N. Petersen
President & COO of Minnegasco, a Division of NorAm Energy Corp

Miggie E. Cramblit
Vice President and General Counsel of Minnegasco, a Division of NorAm Energy Corp

July 1995

Over the last year our Executive Team developed a new vision and mission statement for Minnegasco and formulated related strategies, objectives, and management processes to implement that vision. Our vision is as follows: The future Minnegasco is an Energy and Home Services company that is recognized as a leader in finding new ways to meet existing and emerging customer needs. We reach that vision through commitment to Quality, Growth and Values.

We identified and adopted the five values critical to achieving our vision. How?

We spent a day off-site and began by identifying our personal top three values from a list of thirty-six. We were surprised at our unanimity; ten executives identified integrity or honesty as his/her number one value; one identified service. After sharing and discussing our personal values, we were ready to set our personal beliefs to the side, and focus on the needs of our business. To organize our thinking, we read "Getting Value from Shared Values" by Paul McDonald and Jeffrey Gandz.* McDonald and Gandz also cite the purpose of each culture (group cohesion, regulation and pursuit of objectives) and its salient values.

In a clan culture, shared values include broad-mindedness, consideration, cooperation, courtesy, fairness, forgiveness, humor, moral integrity, openness and social equality. A hierarchical culture entails cautiousness, economy, formality, logic, obedience and orderliness. Market culture values are aggressiveness, diligence and initiative. An adhocracy culture exhibits adaptability, autonomy, creativity, development and experimentation as its main values.

It was easy to see that the current Minnegasco, a regulated gas distribution company, fell somewhere between a clan and hierarchical culture with operating values such as integrity, fairness, cautiousness, economy, obedience, orderliness, and social equality. It was equally clear these values would not sustain our vision as we went through deregulation. What four or five values would be needed for success? We argued, broke into small groups and, in debate team format, made our case to each other. We voted; we debated the results; we joined together as an entire team and presented our results (with minority opinions). We voted again, debated some more and, exhibiting our existing clan values, reached consensus.

In the end we found ourselves largely needing to have the adhocracy values to attain our vision. We chose adaptability, creativity, and personal development as key values and, to make the dramatic shift from where we are to our vision, we added the value of initiative. We also included the value of integrity. We believe integrity is fundamental and too much a part of who we are as individual leaders as well as what Minnegasco is as a company and, therefore, included it as a key value.

Now our task is to live these key values and instill them in our policies and practices to realize our vision.

* "Organizational Dynamics," American Management Association, New York.

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